Maurice Richardson


Maurice Richardson was an English journalist and short story writer.

Life and career

Richardson was born to a wealthy family. As a child, Richardson was sent to prep school, which he disliked; he later recalled his education in his 1968 book Little Victims. He studied at Oxford in the 1920s, where he befriended the poet Brian Howard. After leaving Oxford, he spent some time as an amateur boxer, and wrote his first novel, A Strong Man Needed, a humorous story about a female boxer. Richardson began his journalistic career in the 1930s. After joining the Communist Party, Richardson became a contributor to Left Review and a member of the London-based left-wing Writers and Readers Group which included Randall Swingler, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mulk Raj Anand, Arthur Calder-Marshall and Rose Macaulay.
In the late 1940s, Richardson became a contributor to the British magazine Lilliput. Here he published a series of humorous fantasy stories about a "Dwarf Surrealist Boxer" named Engelbrecht. These tales were illustrated by several noted artists, including Ronald Searle, Gerard Hoffnung and James Boswell. The series was collected in book form as The Exploits of Engelbrecht in 1950; it was later reprinted in 1977 and in a deluxe edition by Savoy Books in 2000. David Langford has praised The Exploits of Engelbrecht for their "enjoyable absurdist humour"; J. G. Ballard also admired the stories, describing them as "English surrealism at its greatest. Witty and fantastical, Maurice Richardson was light years ahead of his time. Unmissable."
After leaving the Communist Party in the 1950s, Richardson worked as a book reviewer. Richardson also became known for arranging meetings between himself and other writers in London pubs. Guests at these meetings included Jeffrey Bernard, Daniel Farson, Swingler, Lionel Bart, Frank Norman and Alan Rawsthorne. In the 1960s, he also worked as the Observer's television critic and wrote sports journalism for The Guardian. Richardson also wrote a study of snakes, lizards and other reptiles entitled The Fascination of Reptiles.
After Richardson's death, a posthumous collection of journalism, Fits and Starts, was issued. Reviewing Fits and Starts, Mary Manning praised the book, particularly Richardson's essay on the Moors murders, which she described as "a masterpiece in this genre".

Fiction